Too Much
by Jessa4865
Summary: A post Signature one-shot. Olivia tries to understand what happened.


Too Much

Jezyk

Spoilers: Up though Signature

Disclaimer: Don't own them. No, really.

Olivia Benson was a liar.

She was a rotten, no-good, two-faced bullshitter.

She'd looked Lauren Cooper in the face and told her she had too much to live for. But she didn't. She didn't have a damn thing. Lauren had given her the opportunity to admit it too. Lauren had asked if she knew what it was like to be alone, to have no one. And for once in her miserable life, Olivia hadn't felt like declaring that she was the only person in the world who truly understood the concept of having no one. So she'd lied right through her teeth, pretending she had no idea of what it was like to grow up without a father, without a sober, loving mother. She may as well have invented a whole host of brothers and sisters with whom she'd shared the daily challenges of childhood.

She'd seen a lot of herself in Lauren, in the driven, almost obnoxious self-righteousness, in the giant chip on her shoulder, especially in the pathetic over-attachment to a coworker. That had been her excuse, her reasoning, for not confessing the entire, angst-ridden story of The Life of Olivia Benson.

Fuck, as far as Lauren knew, there was a Mr. Benson and a bunch of little Bensonlings waiting for her to come home at night.

Maybe, deep down, she hadn't wanted to connect with Lauren for another reason. She suspected she'd recognized just how close to the edge the younger woman had been. Because, in truth, there was too much similarity there.

That was the inherent problem in teaching people, cops, to kill. Because it was a line that, once crossed in the psyche, was easy to trip over in the dark. And they all walked in the dark. They could all depersonalize someone they were speaking to. They could all pull their weapon in a flash. They could all extinguish a life and rationalize it to themselves and everyone they knew. Therein lay the problem. Because they were so good at depersonalizing everyone else that it was no big feat to depersonalize themselves. They were all just as able to lift that gun and extinguish their own life just as easily as they could take another's. It was merely a series of self and group delusions that stopped them all.

She hadn't wanted to admit it, and probably never would unless Lake told someone besides Elliot about her unprofessional reaction to Lauren's suicide, but that had been the very thing that made Lauren seem so familiar to her, so familiar she felt like she'd known Lauren for years. Lauren had been so close to the edge, so lost over the death of her mentor, so desperate for someone to show her the way, any way, to go, so in need of redemption.

Two seconds of comprehending that Lauren had lost her only emotional tie to the world and Olivia knew they might as well have been one in the same.

Because despite her bullshit denial to Lauren's desperate face, Olivia didn't have too much to live for.

Olivia didn't have shit.

Except, perhaps, for an ill-conceived, imaginary love affair with her partner of which said partner wasn't even aware.

Which, in all honesty, probably wasn't what anyone else would consider a reason to live.

Had she been honest and told Lauren that was what she was living for, Lauren might well have put Olivia out of her misery before she turned the gun on herself.

The only thing that got Lauren out of bed each morning was the love and friendship of an older man without children who'd passed on his life's work to someone he cared for like a daughter.

Yeah, while the only thing that got Olivia out of bed each morning was the ridiculous, make believe notion that her partner, the married one with five kids he adored, who loved his job and wanted to make the world safer for his kids and the kids they might one day have and the abused, unwanted kids that Olivia herself had once been, was secretly in love with her not so charming, angry, irritating self.

Some part of her, the part that she was desperately trying to pretend didn't exist simply because of the innate instinct of creatures to continue living, knew it probably would have been better for everyone had Lauren taken Olivia with her.

And despite Lake's words to Elliot, it hadn't been seeing her friend, of sorts, blow out her brains that had made Olivia scream. No, that would have been understandable. That would make anyone scream. The truth was that Olivia had screamed before that, when she first saw the gun Lauren had, when she'd initially thought for that millisecond that Lauren was going to shoot her way out of the room.

Olivia had screamed because she wanted to live.

Even without a damn thing to live for.

That was the height of pathetic.

Standing in the bright sunshine, along with five other people, including Elliot who stood about twenty yards back, watching Lauren's coffin lowered into her grave, Olivia wished she could be as strong as Lauren had been. Because the girl had realized that she'd lost everything, that her mentor was gone, that she'd sacrificed her career in the name of vengeance for the only person in the world she loved, that whatever her purpose for living had been, that it had been served. She'd had the strength to know it was over. She'd had the strength to end the charade. She'd had the strength that Olivia didn't have.

Olivia squinted behind her sunglasses, wondering why the cosmos didn't owe the poor girl enough to rain that day. Their places could just have easily been reversed, Olivia knew. Had any of Elliot's brushes with death been more than a brush, had they been unable to find common ground after she returned from Oregon, had one of their many fights completely severed their friendship, had Olivia ever had to face the day she had no one, fantasy or not, she could have easily gone over the side, killed one of the hundreds of bastards who deserved it and then offed herself. Then Lauren could have been standing there, watching as the world said goodbye to Olivia, watching as the world didn't even register the loss since the world hadn't ever known she was there in the first place.

At least as a cop, she'd be guaranteed a few hundred other cops in observance. She'd be guaranteed the tears of everyone who heard the painful wailing of the bagpipes, even if they didn't know who they were crying over. She'd be guaranteed the acknowledgement of a few thousand commuters who would have to find another way to work that morning when the street in front of the 16 was shut down for her procession.

She carefully picked her way through the quiet cemetery, vanity forcing her to walk on her toes so as not to ruin her heels in the soft grass. She'd told Lauren Cooper that she had too much to live for. And there he was, squinting behind his sunglasses the same as she was, his face drawn tight and anxious, scanning her, reading her, guessing what she needed.

His arm moved over her shoulders, a half hug of camaraderie, the same sort of way he'd reassure his son after a lost baseball game.

But he was her reason for living, for not stopping a child molester once and for all, for not making sure a rapist never raped again, for not giving up on herself.

Her head dropped onto his shoulder, the first time she'd ever done more than mutely accept or flat refuse his gesture of comfort.

Maybe that had been what he'd been waiting for. Maybe he didn't know what else to do. Maybe it was just the right thing to do when someone was in such obvious need of consolation. No matter the reason, he rose to the occasion, using the one arm already around her to pull her in front of him, to wrap his other arm around her, to hold her close in a hug.

Rather than shake him off, rather than laugh off what she so desperately wanted, she took it, reveled in it, shoved as much of it as she could into her memory so that she could call it up whenever she started to believe that Lauren was right. She buried her face in his neck, in the collar of his shirt, inhaling the thick scent of his cologne and masculinity and the overpowering scent of cut grass as well. Her fingers knotted in his suit coat, wrinkling the fabric so that she'd be able to look at it all day and have proof that it had happened. She let her body shake as she let out the sobs, the ones she'd been trying to force back since they'd escaped so unprofessionally in front of a man she barely knew. She allowed his hands to rub her back as his arms comforted her.

She felt his chin slide along her head, felt his lips press against her hair. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to.

She felt better to know it hadn't been a lie.

She really did have too much to live for.


End file.
